Please help me think this through...

[Chris Corrigan]

One of my learnings from the last year, coinciding with the practice of
peace, is about the contrast of justice and reconciliation.  Justice
contains that grasping energy of conflict, a divisive feel to it.
Reconciliation is about opening space and moving forward.

As regards apologies, my personal experience is that they are very
powerful, but they represent a very serious commitment that only
individuals can carry through.  In 1998, the federal government issued
an apology to Aboriginal people in Canada who had been affected by the
residential school policies that tore apart families in our communities
for many generations.  The residential school system was perhaps the
single most successful vehicle of colonization in this country's
history, in some cases almost completely destroying languages, cultural
practices, traditional life, families and individuals.  It was
responsible for multi-generational violence and abuse which has carried
through even to those of us that never set eyes on a residential school.

The federal government apology hit me very personally, and it affected
many people I know the same way.  It felt like something unlocked inside
me.  The federal government took some responsibility especially for the
physical and sexual abuse that happened in the residential schools,
saying to the victims "it was not your fault."  There was a visceral
feeling of something dropping away, perhaps something I didn't even know
was clinging to me.  It was a very deep experience.

The problem was that it didn't last because there was no one actually
doing the reconciliation.  The federal government promised a new
relationship based on reconciliation, but within two years they were
engaged in a national initiative to remake First Nations governments
which was carried out in such a top heavy and non-consultative way that
it was routinely described by non-Aboriginal people as an alarming
assimilationist policy.   This governance initiative, despite the fact
that we actually need to have this conversation, was carried out in such
a way that it increased calls for justice.  It helped to create a
situation of confrontational conflict, and the heady days of
reconciliation talk all but disappeared.

The problem of course, as Michael has pointed out, is that the whole
exercise was been removed from the personal.  There was no one person
who could actually take on the mantle of reconciliation.  It was a
systemic apology for personal pain, and while the apology represented a
profound shift for many of us, the reconciliation process evaporated
into thin air.

The strength of the South African experience was that it was individuals
apologizing for individual acts to other individuals.  That helped that
country to move through the apartheid transition because it allowed for
a peaceful way for people to deal with some of the personal hurt they
had experienced both as victims and perpetrators.

So I don't know that the "US" can apologize for anything.  As much as I
can respectfully take issue with Paul's list of the results of the war,
I actually agree with his point.  To whom to we apologize for and to
what?  To which I will add, and what else will we do?  The fact remains
that apologies are personal, they need "I" language to work, and they
need to heal direct person to person hurts.  Soldiers apologizing for
killing civilians would be very powerful, but having politicians
apologize to whole countries and groups of people is just too diffuse to
be sincere or useful for healing.

Chris

--
CHRIS CORRIGAN
Bowen Island, BC, Canada
(604) 947-9236

Consultation - Facilitation
Open Space Technology

Weblog: http://www.chriscorrigan.com/parkinglot
Homepage: http://www.chriscorrigan.com
chris at chriscorrigan.com

*
*
==========================================================
OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
------------------------------
To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options,
view the archives of oslist at listserv.boisestate.edu:
http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html

To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs:
http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist